The assassination of the governor of Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, on Tuesday is the latest slaying of a politician in the south Asian country over the last few years.
-- October 18, 2007: One suicide attack and another smaller blast targeting former premier and key opposition leader Benazir Bhutto kill at least 139 people in Karachi, just hours after she had returned to Pakistan for the first time in eight years. It is the most deadly attack in the history of Pakistan.
-- December 27, 2007: Bhutto is killed in a shooting and suicide bomb attack, along with nearly two dozen of her supporters, as she leaves a campaign rally in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad.
-- October 6, 2008: A suicide bomber kills 18 people and wounds a Pakistani opposition politician - Rashid Akbar Nowani, a minority Shiia MP from the party of former premier Nawaz Sharif - in the town of Bhakkar in Punjab province.
-- August 2, 2010: Raza Haider, a provincial legislator and member of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in Sindh, where his party is part of the ruling local coalition, is shot dead in Karachi by gunmen on motorcycles, sparking rioting that kills more than 40 people in the teeming city.
-- January 4, 2011: Taseer, the governor of Punjab, is assassinated by one of his bodyguards in Islamabad. He was one of the most moderate political voices in the main ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP) of President Asif Ali Zardari and his Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.